Lemon, Almond and Raspberry Cake for Carolyn's Birthday

My colleague, Carolyn, is turning 50.  This is an important milestone birthday, so I decided to make her a cake.  Carolyn follows a gluten free diet, so the cake that I chose had to fulfil this criteria.  Luckily, these days, there are many delicious gluten free cake recipes around.

A quick Web search brought up this recipe for Lemon, Almond and Raspberry Layer Cake from The Brick Kitchen.  This recipe has been adapted from one of my favourite bakers, Jordan Rondel of The Caker.

Claudia from The Brick Kitchen had created her cake as 3 x 15cm layers.  I went back to a single layer in 9" form, using half of Claudia's recipe:

This cake certainly smelled devine when it came out of the oven.  To decorate it, I made half of the icing recipe, and decorated the cake with crushed freeze-dried raspberries pressed  into a "50" stencil I created just from paper and a template I found on the Web, and also pressed up the sides of the cake:

Pressing on the freeze-dried raspberries was a messy exercise, but I am happy with the end result.  It ain't perfect, but I think it looks pretty good.

To make this cake my way, you will need:

1 x 9" cake tin, greased and lined

150g butter
150g sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs
150g almond meal
37g gluten free plain flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
zest and juice of a lemon
2/3 cup fresh or frozen raspberries

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Beat the butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.  

Using a rubber spatula, fold in the almond meal, flour and baking powder followed by the lemon zest and juice.

Scrape the batter into the prepared cake tin and even the top with a metal spatula.  Place the raspberries on top of the cake at random intervals, pressing in lightly.

Bake the cake for 40-45 minutes or until a skewer pushed into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Take the cake out of the oven and leave it to cool in the tin for 15 minutes, before unmoulding onto a wire rack to cool completely.

For the icing:

112g butter, softened
75g cream cheese, softened
167g sifted pure icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
zest of half a lemon

Beat the cream cheese and butter together in the bowl of a stand mixer until smooth.  Add the icing sugar and beat until smooth.  Beat in the vanilla extract and lemon zest.

Spread the icing evenly over the top and sides of the cooled cake.

Decorate with crushed freeze-dried raspberries if desired.